Just got an S2: Thoughts and need some help

Just got an S2 from the MS store and I'm really pleased so far. You really can't beat the sort of value you get with that student discount. I have a few thoughts on it so far for anyone on the fence and I have some questions as well.

The kickstand is great.

It installed 50+ updates after downloading about 700 megs of files. Not really an issue, but unexpected. It takes quite a while to sort itself out during the initial round.

Battery life has been great. No complaints at all.

The OS is nowhere near as intuitive as another tablet OS but the search function is pretty powerful. I don't even bother digging through menus to find certain settings.

The app store is probably the slowest thing on the tablet.

It can actually view and lightly edit 18M Canon raw files. I'm ecstatic about this. It's not blazing fast, but acceptably quick for what you're asking it to do.

Getting a quality experience out of the RDP app has been a struggle. I think a lot of that is related to my ATI hardware. Splashtop has been a bit better, but I really wanted a solution to remote in and use Lightroom or play Limbo/Hearthstone. I guess everything you see on Youtube just isn't possible.

There's a whole lot of functionality in the desktop as far as file management goes, but there should be a more fluid way to access the touch keyboard than a little icon in the corner.

Desktop or Metro IE, the spotify web app just doesn't work that consistently. I'm not sure what's going on since nearly anything else seems fine

Help

The desktop is generally fine, but since I'm trying to do some file management the menu consistency is annoying. It seems they have touch in mind for any expanded part of the ribbon, but good luck w/ any windows 7 era menus. Has anyone had luck setting the menu text, etc. to a certain font size? Would love some suggestions.

I'm inconsistently able to view some of my network drives. This prevents me from mapping it and adding it to the pictures/video whatever libraries. Not sure how to prompt windows rt to get it together and show them or refresh.

What are the best games on this platform? The windows app store is kind of janky, but functional.

A few sites seem determined to show me mobile versions. How can I request the desktop versions on Metro/Modern IE?

Opinions on a reddit app? Redd Hubb is OK, but I'm used to things a bit more more functional like Flow for Android or Alien Blue for iOS.

You can actually just use the Skydrive app for File management. If you tap the dropdown menu on Skydrive, it gives you the option to explore all your local drives, network drives, and other content. And it has pretty much all the important file management features you'll need.

Thanks u/iamseiko. I didn't really see a need for Skydrive but I took a look last night and, you're right, it's pretty much fine for what I'd want to do. So that takes care of my bitching about the touch interface on the desktop!

I wish MS would advertise this kind of stuff better. The amount of stuff you can do for an ARM tablet is just insane.

Some of my thoughts and suggestions (keeping in mind that I'm on an SP2):

I second u/nguyentrungtu and u/iamseiko. Reddit to Go isn't perfect, but I use it all the time. Skydrive is fantastic for file management. I never thought the 200GB upgrade I got with my SP2 would be use but I love it.

I use Splashtop all the time and really love it. However, I use it for really basic stuff, nothing as performance intensive as Lightroom. If you went for an S2 with the intention of using RDP to replace a full desktop I think you will be disappointed.

Spotlite is a Spotify app that works great. I like it better than the official Spotify iOS apps.

You'll get used to the OS. It has a larger learning curve than others, but its just as if not more powerful.

I don't play a ton of games, but I've been relatively happy so far. I like simply time killers like Angry Birds and Wheres my Water. I was playing a lot of Dragons Blade, but haven't had time recently. I downloaded VBA8 (Gameboy Emulator) and started playing Pokemon last night.

Thank you for the Spotlite suggestion! If you search the app store for "spotify" nothing comes up, it's just frustrating. And pokemon on the tablet will kill my evenings after work. Love this subreddit.

I actually got the S2 to replace an 11 inch macbook air! I have two computers that can run lightroom well and have my catalog stored on google drive. I really just wanted to be able to preview raw files and lightly edit them if need be. It honestly does this better than I could have imagined for a tablet.

I think my disappointment is that my remote experience isn't nearly as good as some of the stuff you see on Youtube with people gaming or etc. I've got to be missing something when it comes to my setup.

I'm not sure what you've seen on youtube, but I can't imagine your missing much. I have a very high end setup at home and even on my home network Splashtop is not a good enough experience for something graphics intensive.

Hmmm. I found my RDP experience on my RT to be absolutely the best rdp experience available. Seriously. Sometimes when I was on my lan connected to my servers Id forget that I even was rdp'ed to a different machine - there really was NO lag. I had to create different backgrounds for each server so I could identify what machine I was on.

Are you using the Metro RDP or the RDP client from the desktop environment?

I tried out the metro RDP app and got frustrated with a lot of jankiness on Windows 7 Ultimate. I couldn't get it to activate the aero desktop and it wouldn't let me adjust scaling from the remote machine. The touch responses were also pretty off for any sort of game that was running (though everything runs more than fine on the host machine).

Are you using windows 8 on your remote servers? I'm wondering if that's just a better experience.

No, I mostly use the desktop RDP client. In fact, I've only run the metro rdp client a couple of times. I recall not liking it. I use a mouse and I connect to Win7 Professional and Win8.

I don't play games over RDP and I don't know anyone who does. I'd imagine that the response would be terrible even under the best conditions. Not because of RT or the Surface but because of the inherent lag associated with RDP.

Here are my favorite games in the app store. BTW, I got a Surface 2 from the MS Store with the student discount as well, so be sure to redeem your $25 Windows Apps gift card!

Paid games:

Halo: Spartan Assault: It's a tad on the expensive side, but extremely fun. Controls are surprisingly intuitive. Missions are pretty short but there's a good amount of them (30).

Ilomilo+: Definitely worth getting, especially if you like puzzle games. I absolutely love puzzle/Indie games (Think Little Big Planet) so I've had a ton of fun with this game, at $5 it's a complete steal.

Gunpowder: Another puzzle game, 125+ levels for $2 is pretty solid. A fun pick up and play game

Free:

Where's My Water 2: Great physics puzzler, the first one is free for a limited time as well

EDIT: Redditting is my favorite Reddit app, btw. Very intuitive and the developer is very responsive on r/redditting if you're having problems with the app